DJ BC is my favorite mashup artist right now. He deserves the nod just for Snoop’s Nu Shooz: [iframe_loader width=”640″ height=”360″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/embed/FIAQGtgzsJE” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen]
Tag Archives: pop
Why do people like Girl Talk?
I don’t enjoy Girl Talk’s music all that much — I find it overwhelming, like watching someone flip channels on a TV. But I think he’s really important, and anyone who cares about music, technology, originality and ownership should be paying close attention. Adam Bossy raised an intriguing idea in his answer — describing an …
What goes on neurologically when a song gets stuck in your head?
The phenomenon of annoyingly persistent earworms is a great introduction to the meme theory: the idea that songs (and all other forms of cultural expression) are self-replicating informational “viruses” that use the mind as their host, the way DNA viruses use living cells and software viruses use computers. The best overview of this theory is …
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How do you know what key you’re in?
It’s hard to figure out what key a piece of music is in. There are a lot of conflicting answers from different music theory texts. To make matters worse, it’s not at all unusual for a song to change keys, even within a section or phrase. Even rock songs written by totally naive songwriters can …
Samples and community
The defining musical experience of my lifetime is hearing familiar samples in unfamiliar contexts. For me, the experience is usually a thrill. For a lot of people, the experience makes them angry. Using recognizable samples necessarily means having an emotional conversation with everyone who already has an attachment to the original recording. Music is about …
What does “ye-yeah” and “baby” mean in the context of pop songs?
“Ye-yeah” and “baby” are open-ended expressions of love, enthusiasm and general positive energy. They might be specifically directed at a loved one, but usually they’re directed at everyone and no one and have no particular meaning at all. Pop lyrics aren’t about conveying specific information. They’re about sound for the sake of sound. The voice …
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Na Na Na Na
If you’ve been following my internet presence, you know how much I love flowcharts. So naturally, I was amused by this Randall Munroe cartoon: I was reminded of it walking down the street the other day, because someone in our neighborhood in Brooklyn was blasting a dancehall track from their car that sampled the “na, …
The complicated case of Antoine Dodson
Meet the most fascinating and problematic pop star of the moment, Antoine Dodson. If you’re a follower of internet memes, you know the story by now. If not: Antoine, his sister Kelly and her daughter were asleep in their apartment in the Lincoln Park housing project in Huntsville, Alabama. An intruder broke in and sexually …
Doctorin’ The Top Forty
In 1988, a pair of British acid house DJs named Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, known as The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, The Timelords, or The KLF, had an improbable number one hit with “Doctorin’ The Tardis.” The track isn’t so much a song as it is an early mashup. Just about everything in it …
INXS needs you tonight
I’m pretty sure that “Need You Tonight” by INXS was the last song I fell in love with through commercial radio. I would never have admitted it, and I couldn’t have articulated why, but oh yes, in middle school this track hit me exactly where I lived. It still sounds as fresh today as it …